Battle for the “Planet of the Humans”

5.6.2020

I watched three documentaries since the stay-at-home began. I usually don’t watch documentaries, especially about the environment. David Attenborough needs to lull me with the marvelous splendor of the planet in HD or I won’t watch it. Too many issues to wrap my head around. They bum me out.

Michael Moore released “Planet of the Humans” for free on Youtube. Free movies? Moore’s a communist!

I’ve never understood Middle America’s disdain for Moore. He has always held up for the little guy. The little guy hates him for it. Perhaps it’s because he pokes the dominant, and now presumed deceased, paradigm. He tips everyone’s sacred cow over and they have to reevaluate everything they’ve ever believed. I think that pisses people off. I admire that.

This film was directed by Jeff Gibbs and he didn’t miss a trick. “Planet” skewers everyone and everything. The Sierra Club, electric cars, every green solution ever marketed to us. It will piss off environmentalists. Conservatives will cheer unless they’re self-aware enough to realize how misnamed they are. They don’t “conserve” anything. No one does.

There are likely a thousand documentaries I won’t watch that would explain every ecosystem we have destroyed. Why waste time? This film pounds the monstrous scope of human impact on the environment into my head with images I’ll never forget. It’ll make you cry in shame. Don’t watch it if you’re on overload right now.

Critics cry that the underlying message of “Planet of the Humans,” mentioned with seemingly indifferent casualness, was the impossible numbers of human beings living on the planet. The filmmakers, deflecting this incredibly profitable negative publicity, deny “population control” is the message they were trying to send. Still, the implications…

Mother Nature (who saw early screenings, I guess) took the implications to heart. She has ignored the critics and thought it necessary to take Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore’s advice and send a virus to control the population.

With that cred, whether you like him or not, no one can deny that Michael Moore is an influential filmmaker.

Mother Nature gave this film two green thumbs up. Me, too.

Another documentary I watched was “Contagion.” This film concentrates on the complexities of the worldwide cogs in the wheel that should be turning during a pandemic. “Contagion,” despite its mirror image documentation of the present day, is fiction. Reality is far more incompetent.

The characters in “Contagion” work together as a worldwide team and didn’t consider destroying relationships with allies and entities assigned to world health. I’m not sure why life doesn’t emulate the Utopian illusions of Hollywood. Teamwork doesn’t seem that difficult; now it’s the stuff of fiction.

There’s a character that looks exactly like our president (if he looked like Jude Law) huckstering a cure for the virus. “Social distancing” is mentioned as a way to stem the spread, and not as a plot to control the masses. The filmmakers didn’t foresee armed protestors demanding to become infected by their barber, but Hollywood can’t think of everything.
Despite the implausible happy ending of a doctor risking the injection of monkey serum in her leg, and miraculously discovering a vaccine, I give “Contagion” two thumbs up. Mother Nature just nodded along during the entire film. She’s still nodding.

The third documentary I watched was “Tiger King.” Mother Nature watched it, too. It cemented the decision she made after watching Moore’s film.

“Tiger King” bummed us both out. All three did, actually.

That’s why I don’t watch documentaries.

Physically distance, socially unite, and stay healthy.